[HN Gopher] Why trucking can't deliver the goods
___________________________________________________________________
Why trucking can't deliver the goods
Author : prostoalex
Score : 76 points
Date : 2022-03-05 17:21 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (prospect.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (prospect.org)
| rightbyte wrote:
| 94% attrition rate for long haul truckers? That is insane.
|
| They are probably payed way too little for so many nights away.
| If they made more they could work less and still have a normal
| life.
| snarf21 wrote:
| This is where automation will start. It seems trivial to have
| special on/off areas for driverless trucks that will just stay
| on route 40 or route 70 or w/e for 2000 miles. Then short range
| drivers will pickup/drop off trucks to these hubs. By having it
| being only highway and just staying in the right lane they can
| run 24/7 without any more complicated things.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| It's surprising to me it isn't in any company's interest to
| charge higher rates and offer an actually reliable service.
| darksaints wrote:
| There are actually quite a few smaller companies that are
| like this...I drove for one to pay my way through college,
| although it was short haul LTL. You might be surprised at
| what types of companies are willing to pay 40-50% more for
| consistent and fast service. Our 2 biggest clients were John
| Deere and Caterpillar parts distributors, delivering parts to
| construction sites, mines, and farms. And we got a bunch of
| business through logistics consultants that used us to make
| up for cheaper carriers dropping the ball.
|
| But for the most part, businesses deal with the problems of
| cheap logistics because they can easily see the prices, but
| the actual costs are harder to measure.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| Interesting. I was assuming that given 94% turnover there
| couldn't be that many quality focused employers.
| darksaints wrote:
| There's always going to be turnover. Long haul has always
| had worse turnover than short haul, although it has never
| been this bad. Long haul is a terrible way to live, even
| if you're paid well.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| Optimizing for short term profits has cause so many issues
| that could have been avoided over these past decades.
| iudqnolq wrote:
| Agreed. I used to be pretty libertarian, but the underlying
| premise companies and individuals act in their own interest
| is disproved again and again (see also how a company isn't
| actually profit maximizing if it discriminates in hiring).
| postpawl wrote:
| Or the company will grow to a point where they buy up all
| their competition and get to set higher prices.
| DerekL wrote:
| _Paid_ , not _payed_.
| learc83 wrote:
| I worked for a start up that sourced truck drivers. One of the
| major factors is that sign on bonuses tend to be bigger than
| any kind of retention pay. So the 94% turnover is misleading.
| Truckers are generally leaving for a sign on bonus at a new
| company. They aren't leaving the industry at that rate.
| newsclues wrote:
| How many long haul routes could use rail for the long part?
| hinkley wrote:
| There was a group at the end of the DotCom Boom that wanted to
| create an elevated rail system of sorts for autonomous vehicles.
| I found this an interesting concept because it essentially
| reduces the driving algorithm to a 2 dimensional problem (linear
| distance and time), which is not much more complicated than
| cruise-control with distance-keeping. They went beyond self
| parking to "drop me off at the front door and go park in the
| garage". That would have been a game changer for retail space in
| dense urban cores because you could consolidate parking blocks
| away and increase retail footage at +-1 floor from street level.
|
| Rail and water are so much more efficient than rubber on roads.
| Water especially. It still blows my mind when my friend with a
| boat told me how much the boat weighs, and yet I could still push
| it off the dock or 'catch' it if they come in too hot. I'm
| pushing tens of thousands of pounds. I can't even push my car
| without two other people to help. We can't build (many) new water
| systems, but we can build rails. In fact it's a shame we let them
| dismantle the old ones.
|
| As we're discovering, rubber is quickly rising as a PM2.5 source
| as ICEs are being more and more regulated. Michelin has been
| experimenting with biodegradable additives to their rubber (in
| fact they claim better performance at 50% tread wear in large
| part due to this new formulation) but I'm not sure how much that
| helps in the long term. Nor regenerative braking vis-a-vis brake
| pad dust.
|
| What's likely going to help more is that GenZ seems to have an
| aversion to driving. Cars and autonomy are no longer synonymous.
| mwint wrote:
| > Nor regenerative braking vis-a-vis brake pad dust.
|
| Huh? To be clear, you're claiming regen braking may not
| significantly reduce brake dust?
|
| I drive an EV with relatively weak regen ('15 Leaf), and easily
| 95% of total energy goes to regen; the last few MPH go to the
| real brakes.
|
| The service manual lists _inspecting_ the brakes at 60k miles
| and again at 100k. I don't expect to ever replace the pads in
| this, unless they rust off from lack of use. So if that pad is
| lasting that long, it must be making less dust.
| smilekzs wrote:
| I think they meant "regardless of what method of braking you
| use, the tire still has to do the same amount of work,
| therefore produce the same amount of tire emissions".
| mwint wrote:
| "Brake pad dust" is pretty specific.
|
| I wonder if tire emissions are true. One on hand, EVs tend
| to be heavier. On the other, efficient braking inside the
| regen zone should mean more gradual stops, lower average
| accelerations and speeds.
| throwaway984393 wrote:
| I clicked the audio version of the story, and this "Trinity
| Audio" version is so much better than other automated readings
| I've heard.
| hash872 wrote:
| Surprised to see this entire conversation and no mention of the
| Jones Act, which pushes the US towards using more truckers
| because it's unfeasible to transport goods by ship from one
| American port to another. Traveling by water being vastly more
| efficient
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| > He's one of some 12,000 truckers who haul the containers from
| the adjacent ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach (where 40
| percent of all the ship-borne imports to the United States
| arrive) to the immense complex of warehouses 50 miles east of
| L.A., where the goods are unpacked, resorted, put back on other
| trucks, and sent to all the Walmarts, Targets, and the like
| within a thousand-mile radius.
|
| Sounds like a job for a train to me, and then local dispatch to
| the relevant warehouses.
| smilekzs wrote:
| This description is not wrong, but not the complete picture
| either. It is true that trucks have to ferry between LGB (~
| Port of Long Beach) and ONT (~ Ontario - San Bernardino
| corridor along I-10). However, ONT is the very place you have
| access to cargo planes and train yards! These facilities (and
| of course the warehouses necessary to buffer between the
| modalities) take up a lot of land --- land that's not readily
| available in the costal areas. You can't exactly lay tracks
| anywhere you feel convenient either, because tracks hate
| elevation changes --- fat luck for you now, because there's
| plenty of those between LGB and ONT...
| quartesixte wrote:
| Yeah it's an unfortunate consequence of history and
| geography.
|
| That travel from Port of Long Beach to the San Bernardino
| Valley is not easy. It is constantly congested because the
| 10, 110, 210, 710, 5, 15, 605, 60, and 91 all connecting POLB
| to the inner Southern California valleys are also the main
| arteries for commuters, last mile delivery, and the general
| populace visiting friends and family. You will get miles long
| convoys of 18-wheelers at rush hour all trying to get out of
| the coast.
|
| But that is also a journey that includes two passes between
| two valleys that are separated by not-insignificant hills, so
| rail will be difficult.
|
| And because no one had the real foresight to create a direct
| rail connection from the ports to the inland valleys, there
| is now a sprawling suburban jungle that will result in the
| displacement of at least a million people, thousands of
| businesses, and a good hundred schools if you attempted to do
| it now.
|
| It's damned if you do damned if you don't. The only solution
| is to somehow get most commuters/passengers off of cars, into
| mass transit, and turn all the highways into basically
| trucking arteries.
| quartesixte wrote:
| > These facilities (and of course the warehouses necessary to
| buffer between the modalities) take up a lot of land
|
| For those who have never been out there, the industrial parks
| of the inland SoCal valleys span miles in width and length.
| This is not just a few city blocks of warehouses. These are
| practically entire towns who only exist for these warehouses.
| stefan_ wrote:
| The primary reason we don't transfer goods via train is that
| from the perspective of truckers, roads magically appear and
| cost nothing. Toll roads are far and between and prefer to rip
| off commuters rather than tax trucks what their weight causes
| in damage.
| shrubble wrote:
| Every single 18-wheeler you see, is paying at least $25k/year
| in taxes just for excise and fuel taxes - just to license a
| truck is $1800/year in Federal excise tax. Taxes on the
| driver, on profits etc., are on top of that.
| ethagknight wrote:
| This is true. The fact that trains can remain competitive
| with trucks getting to use and abuse free asphalt is a
| testament to just how efficient trains are.
| kazen44 wrote:
| don't trucker pay far higher highway/maintenance tax
| compared to normal people using the roads.
|
| that is atleasy my understanding of how a lot of a highway
| development gets funded, bussiness pay a lot more
| highway/road tax.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| I have access to a quarterly report telling what the road
| taxes are by state (which I'm supposed to be consulting
| when I decide where to fuel but don't actually care) and
| can say with 100% certainty that trucks aren't driving
| around on "free asphalt".
|
| They take the money out at the fuel pump, figure out how
| much you owe for each mile driven in each state, divvy up
| what was paid and return any over payment to the owner of
| the truck.
|
| I'm currently sitting in California and they add
| $0.727/gallon to pay for the "free" roads for example.
| Retric wrote:
| No, most road taxes are just gas taxes which truckers
| largely avoid. Semi's are relatively aerodynamically
| efficient vs cars so they don't need nearly as much fuel
| per mile as you might assume. Meanwhile their extreme
| weight both causes significant damage and forces bridges
| etc to be significantly overbuilt vs cars.
| ngngngng wrote:
| My small town has to spend so much money repairing roads
| damaged by large trucks that we considered a weight limit
| or perhaps a fee for vehicles over a certain GVW, but
| anything of the sort is illegal in our state to implement
| so we're just forced to build roads large enough for the
| largest truck that feels like driving through town and
| constantly fixing the damage.
| verve_rat wrote:
| Your town could build some tight s-bends at each entrance
| to town.
| stefan_ wrote:
| When reading the other replies here, keep in mind none of
| those taxes nearly come close to funding the cost of
| roads in the first place.
|
| How could they, something like fuel tax was last raised
| in 1993.
| SteveGerencser wrote:
| From the IRS: The highway use tax applies to highway
| motor vehicles with a taxable gross weight of 55,000
| pounds or more. This generally includes large trucks,
| truck tractors and buses. The tax is based on the weight
| of the vehicle and a variety of special rules apply.
| These special rules are explained in the instructions to
| Form 2290.
|
| So yes, trucks do pay more in taxes, but that doesn't
| help the "roads are free" or the "you didn't pay for
| that" mantra.
| Retric wrote:
| The US tax code is more complex than any one tax. VA for
| example charges fees to any car over 25MPG.
| https://www.dmv.virginia.gov/vehicles/#highwayuse_fee.asp
|
| Overall looking at all taxes and fees vs costs, semi
| trucks get a major discount vs the costs they add to the
| US highway system. They cause a lot of damage and take up
| a lot of space both from being heavy and driving a lot
| more miles while being relatively fuel efficient to their
| weight. This means not only do bridges etc need to be
| over engineered vs cars but they also need to be repaired
| more often.
|
| States are in a bind because if they raise fuel taxes
| truckers will largely fill up in another state. The
| constitution limits what they can do about interstate
| commerce. Meanwhile cars are paying annual registration
| and property taxes on top of fuel taxes while generally
| being driven vastly less.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| toast0 wrote:
| There is rail from the ports, but rail is less flexible and
| harder to expand (and more susceptible to being removed).
| [deleted]
| irrational wrote:
| This was my thought too. All containers go from one port to one
| huge warehouse? Why is that not done by train?
|
| Also, where is this warehouse? I'm thinking that when society
| collapses, that might be a great place to pick up stuff.
| secabeen wrote:
| There is a train line that helps, but it's not enough.
|
| > Also, where is this warehouse? I'm thinking that when
| society collapses, that might be a great place to pick up
| stuff.
|
| It is a collection of warehouses, not one single warehouse,
| and they are in Ontario and Redlands, CA. You can seem them
| clearly on satellite pics surrounding the I-10/I-15 and
| I-10/CA-210 interchanges:
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/@34.0825717,-117.4149858,56798m/.
| ..
| tobylane wrote:
| I wonder if the rail line is under used therefore investment
| can't be justified therefore it's not all that capable. I
| don't know the geography on the ground, probably a lot of
| level crossings, but what of it could be sped up, run trains
| closer together?
| vidanay wrote:
| NIMBY. The hurdles to constructing a new rail line are
| practically insurmountable.
| crubier wrote:
| Yet people are fine with building / enlarging roads...
| giantrobot wrote:
| Except they're not fine with that. In Southern California
| it's basically solid humanity from the ocean to the
| deserts in the east. The existing freeways can't be
| expanded, there's nowhere for them to expand into.
| Businesses and houses butt right up against all of the
| freeways.
|
| This is the same problem with rail lines there. There's
| nowhere to build new rail lines. People live and work
| anywhere you might want to lay track.
|
| Trying to build tracks or roads is complicated by
| geography. There's tons of hills that are impractical to
| tunnel through and there's a fairly steep grade from the
| coast to inland areas. The train tracks exist where
| tracks are most practical.
| artificial wrote:
| Why not in the middle of the freeway? Sacrifice 2-3 lanes
| or do it raised, one for freight another for metro. Last
| mile transportation still needs to be solved, light rail
| would be awesome to and you and down main streets.
| johnwalkr wrote:
| That is not trivial at all. How do you go against status
| quo which is to add more lanes for cars? How do you get
| the train from the middle of the freeway or raised
| portion to outside/ground level? Where do you put
| railyards to break/make trains to deliver to/from local
| places? I'm all for freight trains, but there is no way
| they can simply piggyback on car infrastructure.
| artificial wrote:
| Let's hear some ideas, so far it's how it doesn't work.
| California has that in spades.
| [deleted]
| pg_bot wrote:
| My father is an owner operator of a trucking company. I helped
| him run his business after I graduated from college. The way we
| were able to differentiate was by being extraordinarily reliable
| with our pickups and deliveries. You can achieve this if you can
| communicate often with your clientele and have slack with your
| trailers. You can't have drivers sitting in a loading dock for 2+
| hours waiting to load or unload goods without getting paid for
| that time. So we wrote into our contracts that you get paid
| overtime for sitting around if we showed up on time and you took
| too long to load or unload. Anyone who refused got cut, and we
| still had more than enough people willing to give us business to
| continually expand. We would also talk to them and work around
| production schedules by dropping off trailers and have them be
| loaded when the company had slack in their schedule if they
| wanted. This allowed us to keep great clients, and have
| predictable routes for our drivers. You can go even farther if
| you analyze traffic patterns and attempt to find clients who will
| minimize your deadhead miles.
|
| You can make a lot of money in trucking if you know what you're
| doing since the bar is so low for competence. Most of the big
| boys will churn out drivers and treat them like garbage.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| There was a book by I think Steven Covey or his father, a
| Latter Day Saint (aka Mormon) businessman who talked about
| entrepreneurship in the context of the early nineties. Didn't
| talk about tech, although that's always a part of the story,
| now it's tech, centered around AI. But that was always tied to
| entrepreneurship, it's just back then it was the inventor, not
| the founder. But it was more focussed on starting up a business
| by out-executing. He said 90% of businesses were not executing
| well, just execute well and live by American/Christian/Middle-
| class values and that's all you need.
|
| It seemed widely believed at the time, or he wouldn't address
| this, that to start a business you needed to hire all these
| executives at huge salaries, and lease cars for them, and rent
| office space. He countered no, just do it on your own, just BE
| PUNCTUAL which is worth gold, and the hack is if you can't be
| on time call ahead of time expressing sincere interest in
| respecting people's time. This, so people aren't left doing
| nothing while waiting for you. He said 90% of the time that
| solves the problem. It just has to be sincere, which _does not
| mean_ figure out the magic words to sound sincere, it means
| express it if you feel it, and if you can 't...hit the bricks,
| accepting you can't be a businessman if you don't have a
| problem being a burden. You could be a beggar instead.
|
| Just that part of being punctual, doing what you said you'd do,
| or figuring out how to be of help, really own your failures.
| Another move is talking about it if you have a strong excuse,
| courts absolutely want to hear mitigating factors, and actually
| people do too, it actually helps people feel like they weren't
| betrayed completely, like they do if you say there's no excuse
| for what you've done. Or say you'll examine the personal and
| external failures for some time, though for the moment it's on
| you, and explain in full in a week when cooler heads prevail
| and you did a true post-mortem, identifying all the lessons
| that failures are richly laden with. Like how personal and
| external factors interplayed, so you can do something about it
| being repeated.[1]
|
| I have a relative who was a very successful self-made man and
| the way you hacked him, was a good short haircut (like a 1940's
| haircut, this man was buttoned-down) and punctuality, that was
| literally all it took.
|
| [1]: On that note, some people are incapable of being punctual
| without using controlled substances. Attention Deficit
| Disorder. It's not something that can be addressed just by
| visiting a psychiatrist and saying you think you might have it,
| you might imagine that would be enough like it is with
| practically anything else. Ideally find a psychiatrist who is
| also a patient, that's the ideal.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The dominant scary company in any category is likely
| complacent and letting things like customer service slide,
| which spells opportunity for the entrepreneuer.
| bkav wrote:
| Do you remember the name of the book. It sounds interesting.
| Would love to read that.
| algo_trader wrote:
| > find clients who will minimize your deadhead miles
|
| Off-topic:
|
| Do you think trucking operators can be incentivized to saturate
| certain routes/corridor?
|
| e.g. To justify infra-structure, I want an operator to do at
| least 10 trucks/day through a given corridor, and can offer
| some savings/rebates. Lets say months-long commitments and
| mostly long haul.
|
| Is this doable or completely unrealistic?
|
| Edit: to be clear, I am not the customer, the operator to find
| enough customers to fill the route.
| dtgriscom wrote:
| I'm not clear: who would be incentivizing and thus benefiting
| from this?
| algo_trader wrote:
| A contrived example:
|
| we have excess local diesel, which we are willing to sell
| at a 20% discount, but only if there is enough traffic
| mumblemumble wrote:
| > Over the past decade, dozens of lawsuits from misclassified
| drivers have resulted in judgments affirming that they've been
| misclassified and awarding them compensation from the companies
| that misclassified them. XPO recently paid a $30 million fine to
| a large number of its drivers. But neither XPO nor any of the
| other fined companies have stopped misclassification. It's
| cheaper for them to pay a fine than to pay their drivers a living
| wage.
|
| This would seem to be the root cause of the problem.
| tromp wrote:
| Looks like a business opportunity for an enterprising law
| office to reach out to as many of these drivers as they can and
| file hundreds of such lawsuits. Until it's no longer cheaper
| for XPO to misclassify...
| lostdog wrote:
| The misclassification is supported by the courts. (Because of
| the political leanings of many judges).
| pessimizer wrote:
| Imagine how much money that law office could make when
| they're indirectly paid off by the trucking companies, then
| hired by the trucking companies.
| [deleted]
| randombits0 wrote:
| Ok, I'm dumb. Could someone explain why free-market principles
| aren't working here? If product isn't moving, it seems that those
| who could move product would be worth more and could charge more.
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| Remember, when the market fails, it's NEVER a fault of the
| market. It's usually due to the stars alignment or some evil
| government's insane actions. Nevermind that governments are the
| puppets of the market. It must certainly be the stars alignment
| then. Perhaps the moon's gravitational pull??
| throwaway984393 wrote:
| Does the driver charge for their services? Or does the trucking
| company decide what they can charge? The free market pretends
| everybody has agency, but reality shows that there is a natural
| imbalance of power dynamics which determines how the system
| operates. Regulated markets are one example of a response to
| unequal power dynamics. The article enumerates the ways that
| the trucking companies have more power than truckers and thus
| dictate terms.
| bezospen15 wrote:
| Neither! Freight brokers handle it all and take most of the
| profit. TQL is a horrible horrible company
| deanputney wrote:
| Part of it seems to be that the truckers have no negotiating
| power. They can't raise their prices without collective action.
| granzymes wrote:
| It's a capacity issue due to increased demand and inflexible
| supply. The problem identified at the ports is that lines are
| too long. The article says that truckers aren't showing up
| because of long lines, creating a crisis in logistics (which is
| the basis for the argument that pay and employment status are
| the root causes of supply chain issues).
|
| But if truckers weren't showing up, all else equal, there
| wouldn't be long lines. "No one goes there anymore, it's too
| busy." Therefore, there have to be other underlying issues
| leading to the delays.
|
| We've had an usually high amount of goods coming into the ports
| during the pandemic, which is the actual root cause. The delays
| are also causing companies to order more goods than they need
| in order to guarantee supply on hand, which makes the issue
| even worse.
| lostdog wrote:
| Free market principles are "working" here!
|
| The free market has correctly found that there's a large supply
| of people who can work as a trucker, but not a huge demand. The
| market has "correctly" set wages at a subsistence level for
| these workers.
|
| The slow shipping times are fine too! The market has correctly
| determined that waiting for goods is preferable to spending
| more money to guarantee meeting delivery timelines. Great going
| market!
|
| In seriousness, when you cut compensation to the bone you get
| impoverished workers and a brittle logistics system. Capitalism
| pushes companies too far into cost-cutting, and the regulations
| and unions that used to counter problematic cost-cutting were
| stripped of power in the 80s.
| ThrustVectoring wrote:
| Time mismatch between the underlying issue and the investment
| necessary to fix it. It costs $X to do the business expansion
| required to move the product, and you expect to get $Y from it
| until things return back to "normal", and relevant business
| management believes that $X >> $Y.
| akira2501 wrote:
| "Why trucking can't deliver the goods?"
|
| Sounds more like "Why government can't effectively improve
| markets by simply deregulating them."
| bicx wrote:
| Despite capitalism being lauded by many, I don't think a lot of
| people can actually stomach the harsh realities of how
| capitalism is expected to work. If reality allowed for seamless
| rebalancing of labor during times of shifting supply and
| demand, these truckers could simply move on to a better career
| until shipping companies realize they need to increase their
| compensation and benefits. That would be ideal capitalism.
| However, the reality is that around 70% of Americans live
| paycheck to paycheck (probably much higher for truckers), and
| taking the time and effort to find a better industry and seek
| training is extremely difficult. It could hurt their families
| and send them into a predatory debt cycle.
| [deleted]
| mumblemumble wrote:
| It's also worth noting that even Adam Smith himself didn't
| seem to think that capitalism could work well without strong
| and effective labor unions.
|
| It's, at best, unwise to oppose workers banding together to
| protect their interest, and at the same time turn a blind eye
| to business owners colluding. Which they will always be able
| to do. At the very least, in the US their right to fund think
| tanks that run anti labor union publicity campaigns is
| constitutionally protected.
| sdb0 wrote:
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Your ideal capitalism would also imply that labor gets
| rapidly rewarded for increases in productivity, efficiency,
| output, and restricted supply/excess demand for their skills.
|
| Everything about America is quite the opposite. It is cartel
| suppression of rewarding labor, and has been for centuries
| now. Control of labor "costs" and hostile labor relations is
| openly discussed in business schools and the management
| community for just as long.
|
| All you have to do is watch a CEO immediately demand
| increased compensation for some arbitrary increase in the
| stock price, perhaps due to overall all boats rising,
| fortuitous market conditions, etc.
|
| But if you're a worker bee that saves the company a million
| dollars a year, or bring in 10 million dollars of sales by
| improving the product, what do you get?
|
| A plaque.
|
| You can also tell with the classic news story: "there's not
| enough available people for X job".
|
| This is literally first day of microeconomics: well, increase
| wages (prices) in order to spur supply increase to meet
| demand. Which is heresy in oligarchical and management
| circles, the same "laissez faire" "economics is god-science"
| cult.
|
| The theory and academics of economics have truths and pursue
| the same goals of any field of study.
|
| But the sad fact is that economics as an institution of
| civilization is not, it exists to server the
| oligarch/management class, provide the tools of their
| continued and expanded influence, and suppress the people. It
| professorships are funded and sponsored by the rich and
| powerful. Think tanks, elite positions in central banks and
| regulatory agencies, and the like implicitly and explicitly
| reward those "thought leaders" that serve the rich and
| powerful, and exert a negative career influence on economists
| that do not.
|
| This is not just squabbling over the share of the pie. The
| institution of economics is complicit in the decades-long
| denialism of impending environmental dangers that will
| threaten us collectively in the coming decades.
| dehrmann wrote:
| It worked like it did for airlines: lower prices and generally
| worse service unless you want to pay for it (and most people
| don't).
| pdonis wrote:
| If most people aren't willing to pay more for better service,
| then the better service is not worth what it would cost and
| not providing it makes the economy more efficient--resources
| are freed up to be applied to things that _are_ worth what
| they cost.
| verisimi wrote:
| Or decrease fuel duties to decrease the cost of deliveries -
| surely an obvious answer in inflationary times, as it will
| decrease costs everywhere.
| jeromegv wrote:
| Did you read the article? The issue is cost of labor being
| too cheap and not being compensated for waiting time which
| leads to huge turnover rate. How's reducing fuel duties
| helping the workers?
| diordiderot wrote:
| The extra profits from increased consumption will trickle
| down in the form of new jobs that don't pay a living wage
| either
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Or people reduce consumption and adjust their expectations as
| they reduce their above average consumption relative to the
| rest of their own city, state, country, world's population.
| ekidd wrote:
| While that's certainly an excellent idea, it doesn't directly
| address any of the serious problems discussed in the article.
|
| Long-haul truckers appear to be independent contractors with
| zero market power relative to trucking firms. They're exempt
| from minimum wages and benefits, and they're required to
| lease their trucks from the trucking companies, then pay to
| maintain them.
|
| Under these circumstances, reducing fuel duties might
| slightly reduce costs to consumers. But it doesn't look like
| it would help the truckers one bit, because they have no
| negotiating leverage. Any new money injected into the system
| would just be extracted by the shipping companies. Or that's
| my understanding of the article.
|
| I'm not saying you're doing this, but I am frankly tired of
| knee-jerk, simple answers to tricky problems. If someone
| tells me the answer is _always_ deregulation or lower taxes
| or whatever, and their advice never changes depending on the
| situation at hand, I 'm increasingly assuming that they're
| pushing a simplistic, abstract theory. Given the state of the
| world today, we need to stop repeating slogans and start
| thinking hard about how to solve the problems we face.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| > Long-haul truckers appear to be independent contractors
| with zero market power relative to trucking firms.
|
| Some are, most drive for a company.
|
| Its not like they are forcing them to go out and spend
| $140,000+ on a truck to make less than minimum wage as TFA
| asserts but people are choosing to buy (or lease) a truck
| on their own volition. Maybe they make money, maybe they
| lose money, either way it's what they chose to do and
| business is hard.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > I'm not saying you're doing this, but I am frankly tired
| of knee-jerk, simple answers to tricky problems.
|
| This one does have a knee jerk simple answer.
|
| Increase pay to attract and retain sufficient talent. The
| root problem is are consumers willing to pay extra for the
| end goods so that enough truckers will be willing to do the
| job under current parameters, or are they willing to forego
| consumption, which is exactly what is playing out.
|
| Of course, the problem of insufficient supply of truck
| drivers can also be solved by reducing demand for truck
| drivers, by using automation/trains/reducing
| regulations/etc. The reducing regulations one is cheapest,
| of course.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > The root problem is are consumers willing to pay extra
| for the end goods so that enough truckers will be willing
| to do the job under current parameters,
|
| there's no evidence whatsoever that any price increases
| seen in the last 20 months are attributable to paying
| truckers any more, nor is there much evidence that
| consumption is being foregone.
|
| so, i am not really sure what your point is or how this
| can be the "root problem".
| [deleted]
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| The oil companies could reduce their record profits a bit to
| help the country.
| splitstud wrote:
| UncleEntity wrote:
| I'm probably an average truck driver. Well, I'm lazy as hell but
| have enough experience from the '00s that I can get away with
| being lazy. I will easily take home over $50k this year with
| putting in the minimal effort to not get fired for
| 'underproducing'.
|
| Makes me wonder where they're finding these $20k-something long
| haul truckers they cite in TFA really.
|
| I also drive for an owner/operator and get to see the revenue
| that goes to the truck (even though I'm not supposed to be able
| to), know what I get paid, how much fuel goes into the truck and
| have a pretty good general idea what the other expenses are and
| know he isn't losing money having me drive this truck around.
|
| If someone is making $28k/year driving a truck they're doing
| something very, very wrong...if I cared enough I could easily
| find another job making more than I'm currently earning and be in
| another truck by the end of the week, done it before and will
| probably do it again if they irritate me enough though I'm trying
| to be good and want to buy a condo outright next year.
|
| So, yeah, there's always been a driver shortage but it isn't
| really over some imaginary low pay problem, mostly because it is
| easy enough to get a better job where you don't have to live in a
| truck and deal with the annoying shippers and receivers (which is
| pretty bad right now due to COVID-19 staffing issues) after you
| get a year or so of over the road experience.
| vikingerik wrote:
| But that last paragraph is a low pay problem. Raise the pay and
| you'll get more people willing to put up with the downsides. In
| any job.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > I'm probably an average truck driver.
|
| As a truck driver who reads Hacker News and has done for
| several years, I suspect that "average" might not be the right
| adjective :) Not that I'm saying no truck driver would ever
| read Hacker News, just not the average truck driver.
| shoo wrote:
| tangential recommendation: if you enjoy reading longform articles
| about logistics, check out Marc Levinson's book "The Box" about
| the history of the shipping container.
|
| there's a bunch of interesting aspects: the shifting balance of
| power between unions and capital (breakbulk shipping is a lot
| more labour intensive, switching to containers permanently
| removes longshoremen jobs, longshoremen working conditions are
| frequently abysmal when capital gets the upper hand); regulation
| in the US artificially fixing prices that artificially prop-up
| one form of transport (e.g. rail) over another (intermodal sea +
| road); shipping companies forming cartels to fix prices; the
| engineering design and investment required in ships, cranes and
| trucks to support a particular design of container; the process
| of standardising containers for compatibility; different vested
| interests attempting to upgrade port infrastructure or to block
| it; which countries and ports were able to position themselves to
| benefit from the increasing adoption of the new container
| transport protocol, and which ones got left behind; the US army
| as an adopter of shipping containers & how winning a contract to
| ship supplies to the conflict in Vietnam created an opportunity
| to fill otherwise empty container ships with goods exported from
| Japan for the return leg back to the US. Also, the story of
| fortunes made and fortunes lost by Malcom Mclean.
| [deleted]
| kurthr wrote:
| According to Wells Fargo, the most common cause for drivers to be
| removed from driver rolls is marijuana testing, especially in
| states that have legalized (e.g. California, Oregon, Colorado,
| etc).
|
| "The law [FMCSA] has impacted nearly 110,000 truckers, about 56%
| of which were reported for marijuana use, according to government
| data from December 2021."
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/marijuana-testing-leading-ca...
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